Saturday 10th December 2022

So I spent all day at this really big shopping centre that's near (well sort of near) my house.

I had to wake up an hour early as the youth club that I'm in was going to watch the new Matilda film in the cinema in the really big shopping centre. I blew my money on overpriced popcorn (£4.50 for a small serving of popcorn!?) and the children of the group were surprisingly quiet the entire time. In fact I was the loud one there as I have a habit of talking to myself whenever whatever I'm watching is either really good or really bad. So the new Matilda film is actually really good. It is a musical though, and I don't like musicals, but the character writing is so much better than the original film and the book. They portrayed the parents as idiots in such a way that is comedic but also realistic. Matilda likes to go to the portable library in a van which is run by this new character who wasn't in the book. She also throughout tells a story she made up about 2 circus performers, which originally just seemed like a mini sub plot, but linked back to the original story in a more smooth and organic way than the original film and book. Miss Trunchball is portrayed as some psychopath who likes to watch kids suffer and acts like a dictator with all her cameras that link to her many TVs in her office. And Miss Honey does try to speak up, but is absolutely terrified of her so she mumbles when she tries to. The scene where the chalk writes on the board is also pretty cool too. In the book Miss Trunchball walks in to monitor and sees the chalk writing on the board and freaks out and leaves. Pretty anti-climatic. In the original film the same thing happens, but then all the students revolt and throw food around, flip over desks, screaming, and causing such a big mess that Miss Trunchball runs out. In the new film Miss Trunchball is giving out an unfair spelling test and whoever gets a question wrong goes in the chockey, So then all the students start screaming wrong answers as they all can't fit in the chokey. Then the chalk writing and the chains from the chockey form a ghost like figure who wrecks the place and throws her out the window. Then the students start revolting. The ending doesn't really makes sense though: why did the school turn into a theme park?

My brother had a birthday party with his friends in the afternoon that me and my friend were tagging along to as my birthday is only a week and a half before and I couldn't be bothered to think of something original, and it wasn't worth going home only to leave an hour later. So we got lunch at subway and looked through the shops for a couple of hours. Mum wanted to go to Waterstones as it's full of books. I went to the manga section looking through the blurbs to see if anything seemed interesting. I picked up a manga at the end called "assassination classroom" and because mum hadn't been paid yet and had no money, I had to ask dad for £10 so I could buy a book that is exactly what it sounds like. I got it in the end and read it whenever I had free time that day. I'm disappointed in the lack of gore though. The age rating said it had realistic violence in but it doesn't really as the main character they're trying to kill is some weird octopus alien. We then also went to GAME on my request and I saw a PS5 in the flesh! It was one of those display ones, and the screen wasn't turned on, but still; I got to feel the controller. I also realised that switch cases are much smaller and lighter than I thought. Then we walked over to the area with the laser tag (it was a laser tag party) and waited for the rest to come.

I named myself potato because my friend took pingu. There was another party joining us which was full of kids. At least me and my friend and my brother were on the same team. I haven't played laser tag in years and neither did my friend, which showed as my aim was awful. Dad kept shooting me and I kept shooting him back (he also named himself "tinkerbell".) I was ranked 14th out of 31 in total and my team ended up winning.

We then went over to the pizza place that dad made a reservation to. It was a proper Italian place and you could see them cooking it in a wood fired oven. It was also quiet as it was only 4:30 in the afternoon. A lot of it was my brother's friends doing whatever on one side and me looking over my friends shoulder as she did her daily duolingo. The pizza was pretty good though. It wasn't like the stuff you get from takeaways; it was actual pizza. My friend only managed to eat half of hers and offered me to eat the other half. I was still eating mine and didn't want to agree incase I got full. I ended up finishing it as she was leaving and the plate was being taken away. I'm still full from that.

After the guests left we went home and I had a shower in what felt like a volcano because there's no hot water coming from the shower for some reason.